Three big Forest Fires on 3 August 2021 seen from a NASA Satellite
Yesterday afternoon, a loud boom caught my attention. Just overhead, a giant Turkish Sea King C-46 helicopter carrying a big, red water bucket, raced towards the mountains behind Side. This morning, a Russian built Mi-8 helicopter followed – with an identical water bucket stringed to it. There was no smoke on the horizon but these helicopters must be heading to a forest fire off the coast lime – somewhere in the Anatolian mountains.
Turkish Fire Brigades deploy Helicopters against Forest Fires - here a Mi-8 in Izmir 10-07-24
Having a house in the Cevennes in France makes me acutely aware of the risk of forest fires during hot summer months. Sparks from a lightning or a carelessly thrown away cigarette can ignite a dry forest. The long heat waves over the last few years accentuate the risk.
Half the Forest next to my House in the Cevennes burnt down a few years ago - all Pines
The bigger problem though are unkept forests. Until fifty years ago, many people lived in the country side and looked after their forests. Sheep and goats were grazing there, pine cones were collected by kids to lite a chimney fire in the winter, adults collected fallen branches and broken trees as fire wood. There was little material on the ground which could feed a big fire. Today’s forest in France look different. There is a lot of inflammable material on the ground. No wonder the smallest fires quickly grow into huge fire storms.
Med Pines make up most of the Forest on Turkish Shores - here a small Bay near Antiochia
The forestation policies have not helped either. Fast growing Mediterranean pines are preferred over slowly growing hardwoods like oak, wild olive and almond trees. Whilst suitable to stop ground erosion, this choice backfires once a forest burns. Pine trees with their raisin burn like torches and create a fire wall. The exploding pine cones fly like hand grenades 50 meters through the air and spread any fire quickly.
The Forest Fire on the Dardanelles in Summer of 2021 lasted for Days
Last but not least, the professionalization of fire brigades made them shrink. They do not have the critical number of fire fighters any longer to extinguish a big forest fire. They need quickly the help of helicopters or Canadair planes. In Switzerland, firefighting is done differently. For every male older than 18 years service in the fire brigade is mandatory. Otherwise you pay a special fire tax. With 10 training rehearsals per year, a Swiss fire fighter is fairly proficient. For special problems like chemicals or sky scrapers there is a professional platoon in the regional centres. Honestly, manipulating a hose, operating a big water pump station or wearing a breathing apparatus is not that challenging. I did all of that myself.
Fire Risk By District in Türkiye
Over the last few days I noticed that Türkiye faces the same challenges as France, only one or two magnitudes higher. The rural population dropped by more than 10% to now only 7 million people. Türkiye has 80 million people. At the same time the recreational use of forest increased with urban dwellers often not aware of how easy they can start a fire. Also, there were large re-forestation programs to stop erosion or replaced burnt-down forests – mostly with rapid growing, but highly inflammable Mediterranean pines.
Big C-46 Sea King Helicopters are used for Fire Figting
Firefighting is organized along French principles and thus understaffed. Not surprisingly, there were 2’500 fires per year since 2015 which destroyed a total of 7’000 hectares of forest. Türkiye has about 23 million hectares of forest. Whilst this is only 0.03%, there were much bigger fires like the one in 2008 which burnt down 16’000 hectares of forest over six days. Only 11% of fires were caused by lightning. 89% are caused by human beings. Still, there were 3'400 fires in 2022, during the very hot summer.
Forest Fires in the Mediterranean during 2022
Türkiye is aware of the value of its forests and has already done a lot. Every year its Directorate of Forestry trains 800 specialist fire fighter. It adopted a policy of responding to any forest fire within 15 minutes, built access roads in the mountains and started to change its reforesting policy by planting more hard wood trees. There are now 27 dedicated aircraft like the Canadair, 101 large helicopter and 10 large drones available for deployment.
All these changes had positive effects. Since 2018 Türkiye can meet its response targets and forest fires are less frequent than in other Mediterranean countries. But there is still a long way to go – structural changes take decades to implement. At least the change has started and Turkish people start to become aware of the risks.
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